P.S. Mueller

We're going through some boxes of stuff from the basement, deciding what to keep and what to recycle (or send to the trash, which in Saint Paul goes to an incinerator). As weirdo print designers, my other half and I have a few too many copies of the Twin Cities' various, now-defunct weekly alternative newspapers that we kept for various reasons.

Sometimes it was a particular article that included someone we know. Other times the illustration or photos are by someone we know. Sometimes it was just an interesting topic at the time, and now I can't quite figure out why it seemed so important.

While I was sorting through it all, I saw this cartoon by P.S. Mueller on the back page of the City Pages:

(Click to enlarge.)

I think I saw my first Mueller cartoon while I was living in Washington, D.C. in the mid-1980s — probably in the alternative weekly there — but it's possible it was after I came to Minnesota in 1986.  

At first I was going to crop in on my photo to only show the cartoon, and then I thought I should retain the part of the page I had included in order to retain the short text ads that ran around it to give a sense of the context. And the phone number that ran above it... sans area code. 

The 612 now associated with Minneapolis went without saying back in those days, since it covered the entire Twin Cities. We split into four area codes in the late 1990s and Saint Paul lost out to Minneapolis on retaining 612. 

I remember advocating for existing phone numbers to keep 612, with cell phone numbers getting a new area code. I still can't remember what geography the other two area codes (952 and 763) cover exactly.

Those were the days!